(click to enlarge)
STORYLINE: “Hungry... So hungry…”
The voice pulsed in Kyle’s head like a corrupted audio loop that refused to die.
He panted, crouching low as he hurried behind the Shadow Serpent. The scaly bastard had zero sympathy for tall mortals who lacked night vision. Jihoon was far heavier than he looked, all dense muscle and dead weight. Kyle would love to see the snake try hauling a whole adult body through a low-hanging maintenance crawlspace.
To make matters worse, he had no idea where they were. This wasn’t the pristine halls of the clinic, or damp maze of the sewer.
And the light guiding their way? It was literally an old gutted television strapped on Jihoon’s head as a makeshift helmet. The damn thing turned on when it touched Jihoon’s skin. It was the craziest thing, seeing his face in the static, projecting flickering violet light down the crawlspace.
Jihoon. Comatose. Haunter of old televisions.
Just another cursed day in the Forbidden Zone.
A low fog rolled along the floor, thick enough to swallow his boots. Overhead, copper pipes dripped with rhythmic precision. The air felt suffocatingly warm, heavy with the stench of wet dirt and rot.
It was the kind of habitat only a giant reptile would find delightful.
A startled bat squeaked, its leathery wing brushing his cheek as it fluttered past. Kyle jumped, his forehead cracked against a low wooden crossbeam. Soil and dead roots rained straight into his eyes.
He sneezed, jerking upward and slamming his head into the copper pipes running along the ceiling. The loud metallic clang vibrated deep into the darkness ahead, echoing down what felt like miles of empty tunnel.
“Oh hell no,” he huffed.
He dropped to his knees to catch his breath, easing Jihoon onto the mud. A second later, a dull thump echoed back from the dark.
Kyle froze. Echoes were supposed to fade out, not boomerang back toward you.
The television screen flickered violently, sizzled, and died.
Total, pitch darkness.
The Serpent was lurking nearby, a strange beast that took many forms. Sometimes pure energy, sometimes a shadow. But right now, as it led them, it was corporeal. He heard the heavy rasp of scales sliding against scales. And when its rattle tipped tail brushed his hand, it felt icy and slippery.
Kyle dug through his backpack until his fingers found the entropy-powered battery light. It turned on with a heavy, satisfying click. Violet light flooded the narrow space. Finally, he could see where he was. Or at least, he could if there wasn’t a wall of undulating obsidian scales blocking most of his view.
The ground trembled. A cold draft rushed through the passage, carrying the smell of wet stone.
The Serpent suddenly hissed, its massive coils tightening into a defensive knot. Its head swung forward, then whipped back toward the way they had come.
“I told you Snakepoo,” Kyle grumbled. “Not the best route. Now we’re too far to go back, the hell if I know how much further ahead we have to go.”
The Serpent turned its massive head, giving him a look that somehow resembled a sheepish shrug.
"Right. Physical dead-ends aren't something a Shadow Serpent thinks about when picking a path."
Snakepoo suddenly looked up and flicked its tongue.
A deep concussion rolled through the tunnel walls, followed by the distant screech of tearing metal somewhere above them. The pipes shuddered in their brackets.
The Serpent froze, every muscle in its coiled body instantly rigid.
Fine grit rained from the roof.
Kyle frowned. “What?”
The Serpent leaned down, tenderly nudging Jihoon’s limp fingers with its snout. Then it looked straight up.
Far above their heads, something massive groaned beneath the weight of the earth.
Without a sound, the Shadow Serpent dissolved into a column of black vapor and shot straight upward through the solid rock ceiling. Just like that, the scaly bastard abandoned them.
“I don’t know if I should be happy or worried," Kyle muttered, letting out a long breath. That big ass snake made his skin crawl. He shivered.
He gently placed a hand on Jihoon’s shoulder, “Looks like it’s just you and me now, Buddy.”
He unbuckled the dead TV helmet and pulled it off to give the guy some air.
“Hungry…” the voice murmured in his mind, like a recording stuck on repeat.
Kyle unzipped his pack to search for rations, but he already knew the truth. There was none.
He sighed, leaning his back against the damp earth and wiping sweaty bangs from his eyes. As his pulse slowed, he looked over at Jihoon, taking him in fully for the first time since this bizarre misadventure started. There was a strange, fragile comfort in being alone together in the dark. In the violet beam of the entropy light, Jihoon’s face possessed a surreal, almost luminous quality.
Yet everything about him was off. He looked breathtaking and deathly ill at the same time. His jawline appeared chiseled by a sculptor, but bruised, dark hollows ringed his eyes. The clumsy, endearing nerd Kyle used to know had vanished. This version of Jihoon looked built for high-fashion billboards or theatrical stage lights. Tall, sculpted, a god among mortals. A god that only did two things, sleep and bitch about being hungry.
Kyle leaned forward, resting his chin in his palms. That dork in his class, the one too shy to tell the girl he loved how he felt, had morphed into something completely alien.
Why did he have to become so ridiculously attractive?
“So hungry…”
“Could you stop that, Jih… I mean… Lath… Urgh. I don’t even know what to freaking call you anymore. Jihoon? Lathandro? Jihandro?”
No one laughed. In the distance, a faint rumble vibrated through the rock.
"Okay, let's get real," Kyle said, his voice softening as he sat beside him. “I mean, obviously I gotta protect you. This whole mess is my fault, I get it. But can we address the long hair? Seriously dude, it’s a problem.”
Kyle lifted Jihoon’s head into his lap and began braiding the long strands with careful, surprisingly gentle fingers. “I mean, it is pretty badass. Feels really nice too. Silky. But like a comic book cape, just because it looks cool on paper, doesn’t mean it’s not a pain in the ass in the real world.”
Jihoon remained motionless.
Kyle sighed, and tied off the braid as best as he could with a frayed strip of cloth.
As he pulled back, he noticed Jihoon’s lips were parted slightly. He saw something white gleaming against his lower lip. Long. Sharp.
“Need…”
Kyle shifted uneasily. Sweat ran down his face. His shirt stuck to his back.
Those teeth didn't belong in the mouth of his friend.
He looked left and right, then leaned closer to inspect them.
They weren’t what he was expecting. Not vampire fangs. They were thin and translucent, almost like quartz, with a delicate hinge at the gumline.
Kyle reached out with a trembling finger and tapped one.
The fang folded backward neatly against the roof of the mouth. When he released the pressure, it snapped forward again.
That’s when he realized what they were.
Snake fangs.
“Feed…”
A chill raced up his spine.
He used his thumb to gently peel back one of Jihoon’s eyelids.
The eye was rolled back, but the bottom edge of the iris was visible. The pupil wasn't a round human circle; it had narrowed into a vertical slit. And the color made Kyle's breath catch. He just realized Jihoon’s unusual teal eye color was the exact same color as the eyes of the Serpent.
Kyle gasped. As he recoiled, his wrist caught the edge of the exposed tooth.
A thin line of dark crimson bloomed where the fang sliced his skin.
He stared at the blood bead on his thumb.
Then he looked back at Jihoon.
“Hungry….”
Kyle’s heart hammered against his ribs. "I know."
“So hungry...”
He gulped. He wanted to say something smartass about this situation, but the words died in his throat. He just sat there in the dirt, staring at Jihoon like an idiot.
Against every instinct he possessed, Kyle raised his bleeding thumb back to Jihoon’s lips.
The hinged fangs deployed instantly, driven by pure reflex, and sank deep into the flesh of his hand.
Kyle squeezed his eyes shut and let out a sharp hiss. It felt like a white-hot needle driving through his palm, but within seconds, the pain dissolved into a weird, numb warmth. The sensation hummed through his core, heavy and intoxicating. He gasped, a faint moan slipping out before he could stop it. He knew he should be terrified, but a strange euphoria hijacked his brain.
He fell into a daze… falling.. falling… once more into sleep….
He found himself standing in a blinding, sterile white expanse. There was nothing here. No walls. No ceiling. No horizon. Just Kyle, standing in the light, and the dark silhouette waiting before him.
He kept his eyes fixed on the floor. His reflection stared back from a pair of pristine Italian leather oxfords. His security uniform was immaculate, stripped of mud, blood, sweat, and exhaustion. This was what he was supposed to be. A guardian. A protector. An unbroken sentinel.
This dreamspace was different. Honest.
Kyle swallowed. He didn't want to look up at the figure standing in the blaring light. The figure reached toward him. A pale hand. Long black claws.
Kyle's gaze followed it only as far as the chest, and stopped. A golden serpent rested against the black-and-white robes. His breath caught. He knew that necklace. He had seen it around the mummified priestess in the 1929 Ford Coupe. The symbol of the Children of Apophis. But this wasn't the little golden brooch the Children wore. This was larger. A ceremonial necklace. Roped gold, heavy enough to look like an emblem of rank. A much higher rank.
Kyle's stomach tightened. Why was that around this person's neck?
He still didn't look up. He couldn't. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to run. Run now. But he didn’t.
The figure's fingers slid easily between his, silky and graceful. Where their palms met, blood welled up. Kyle flinched. It was a covenant. A sacred bond sealed in blood. Vile. Wrong. Permanent.
Then he smelled it. Clove. Heavy. Sweet. Suffocating. He felt dizzy.
The other clawed hand caught his chin. Slowly, impossibly gently, it tilted his face upward. Kyle braced himself. Dark robes. Regal posture. Terrible authority. That smug, predatory confidence. He knew exactly what he was going to see.
But when he looked up, it wasn’t MasterGin. It was Jihoon, his strange serpentine eyes deeply amused, his lips curving into a mischievous grin.
“Boo.”
Kyle gasped, his eyes flying open as he yanked his bleeding hand back.
“Something about you is very, very wrong,” he yelped at the comatose figure on the ground, cradling his wounded hand against his chest. “Not cool! Not cool at all!”
Soil rained down from the ceiling.
He didn’t like this. Not one bit.
At least Jihoon had been fed, and would shut up now. Who knows how long MasterGin had kept him locked up and neglected. Once they got out of the Zone, his friend could get proper medical care.
Then came the sound. A horrible, wet choking from deep in Jihoon's chest. Kyle looked down in horror.
Black, viscous fluid bubbled up from Jihoon’s throat. His chest heaved violently as he fought for air. His skin turned a mottled grey, the dark hollows under his eyes bruising into deep purple.
“Shit!”
Kyle flipped him onto his side, pounding his fist between Jihoon's shoulder blades like he was treating a choking victim.
A thick splatter of black blood struck the mud.
Relying on his security training, Kyle dragged Jihoon flat, locked his hands together beneath the ribcage, and delivered a swift upward thrust. Instead of clearing an airway, the impact caused Jihoon to heave up a massive wave of dark, oily fluid.
It kept coming, far more volume than the few drops of blood Kyle had just provided.
Finally, the heaving stopped, leaving Jihoon limp in the dirt.
“Hungry…. So hungry…”
Kyle let out a shaky groan, pulling off his outer shirt to wipe the black sludge from his friend’s face.
“Don't you dare," he said quietly. "Don't you dare die on me after all the bullshit we all went through to get you out of here. Do you hear me? Man up.”
A sharp burning sensation pulsed in his hand. He looked down at the puncture wound. Thin violet veins were creeping up his forearm from the bite mark.
Infection.
His skin prickled with an icy, metallic heat, like frozen needles marching beneath his flesh. Kyle’s breath hitched, his heart hammering against his ribs in a full-blown panic. His vision swirled at the edges, fringed in static. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to press his palm flat against the cold soil to anchor himself, but the heat surged straight up his neck and into his skull, buzzing like an overloaded capacitor.
When he forced his eyes open, the pitch black of the crawlspace was gone.
The dark had bled into a faint, infrared violet-tinted luminescence. The world was rendered in eerie thermal contrast—every crack in the freezing masonry radiated a dull violet hue, while the heat pulsing from the overhead pipes stood out in sharp, unnatural focus. Like a viper tracking prey in the dark, he could see the very temperature of the room.
“What the…?”
A familiar voice echoed through the narrow tunnel. “See, I told you! This was a terrible idea. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Kyle looked over, his jaw dropping.
Jihoon was floating a foot off the ground, actively shoving another spectral figure. Both forms were semi-transparent, glowing with a soft violet light, but undeniably visible in this new thermal world.
“Holy shit.”
Both ghosts stopped arguing and turned to stare.
“You can see us?” they spoke in unison.
"Maybe," Kyle choked out, gripping his wounded arm. “If you two bickering assholes are really here.”
The second ghost pointed to the wound. “Ha! I win! I told you it would work!”
Jihoon looked at Kyle, deep guilt reflecting in his glowing eyes. "I'm so sorry, Kyle. I tried to talk him out of it. I really did."
“Excuse me,” Lathandro threw his hands up in mock outrage. "Why is no one applauding my brilliance? Did I not just solve all our communication problems? Are we not currently interacting in physical reality?” He huffed, waving a dismissive, translucent hand toward Kyle. “Tall, dark, and grumpy was our ticket out. You’re welcome!”
"Will one of you bastards explain what the fuck just happened?” Kyle spat, his knuckles white as he squeezed his forearm.
A strange sensation hit Kyle like a falling wall of bricks. He felt an intense, gnawing hunger, but it wasn’t his own.
Jihoon swayed on his spectral feet, looking exhausted despite having no physical body. He pressed a ghostly palm to his chest.
"Still hungry..."
On him, Jihoon:
Hair emissive: RavenBell - Persephone Hair, emissive overlay [M][mesh](Engine Room)(200L)
Tattoo: Nuuna - EVI Metallic EVOX 2K tint [BOM](Engine Room)(300L)
Makeup: Rubedo - Blanche, 12 [BOM](Camp Syndicate)(290L)
Makeup: Rubedo - Blanche, 12 [BOM](Camp Syndicate)(290L)
Boots: MEMENTO - NEO. Boots V2 [LEGACY M] [mesh]
Crown: UNA - Ruise crown Silver [mesh]
Claws: Subject Thirteen - Solstice Set - LegacyA [mesh]
Snake Necklace: SIGMA Minos necklace [mesh]
Skin: outernaked - #evox - juhoon skin [NF: natural] - wb [BOM]
Eyes: Poetic Colors - Jaded Eyes - Jade [BOM]
Tattoo: Izzie's Face & Body Blood & Wounds (199L)
Hair: TRASH Lucifer w/o Horns V1 - Rainbow pack [mesh](Midnight Order)(299L)
Eyes: Mana Jelly Eyes, Clear [BOM] (Midnight Order)(399L)
Skin: MUDSKIN Hajimu, C, Brow, WINTER(gacha)(The Arcade)(75L)
Glasses: SOLE SA, Glasses Penta CP, Black [mesh](339L)
Body: TheShops [BODY] Athletic Meshbody (Legacy)(m) (1.7.1) [mesh](5000L)
Setting:
Pipes: SIGNΛ - Modular Pipes Kit [mesh](Engine Room)(900L)
BONUS IMAGES: inworld raw shots, midday sky, default camera:
